How the Innu are Portrayed in Media

The detrimental negative view of Native Canadians must come from somewhere, as it is hard to believe that the general public would stigmatize and shun an entire grouping of people who suffered at the hands of their ancestors, especially considering Native Canadians are severely impoverished, disenfranchised, and marginalized in Canada. The discourses about Native Canadians being lazy addicts who chose their lifestyle can easily be transferred to other marginalized peoples, like sex trade workers and working class Black people (particularly in the United States). This stereotyping was analyzed by Stephen Claxton-Oldfield and Sheila Keefe. They asked undergraduate students in Newfoundland to list how they would describe the Innu in Labrador using either short phrases or single words. Here are the results:

The top five descriptors that the participants would use for the Innu are uneducated, substance abusing, poor, isolated, and gas-sniffers. 
Participants were also asked to list a possible five sources for their impressions on the Innu. 98.7% stated that their impression came from television, 74.4% stated hearsay, and 70.5% stated newspapers. Only one participant had experienced first-hand contact with the Innu. 

The results of this survey prompted Claxton-Oldfield and Keefe to do a second study analyzing newspapers. They chose newspapers over television because the medium is more traceable. They analyzed a daily newspaper in Newfoundland with a readership of over 30,000 people. The examined from January 2, 1996 - December 31, 1996. These were the results:

Articles about the Innu occurred 66 times during the study period. The percentage in the table reflects the percentage of those articles. The category of 'government' referred to dealings with the government, such as the relocation of the Innu and Innu protests over low-flying military planes. The category of 'culture/community' referred to any articles that were about local elections. The category of 'criminal/deviant acts of Innu' referred to charges of drug possession and the disarming of an Innu woman with a 12-gauge shotgun. 'Inter-conflict' referred to articles that covered co-operations (and unco-operations) between Innu and local mining companies, as well as 'intra-amity' and 'inter-amity'. The researchers also make note that 18% of the items that were labelled as government, culture/community, or inter-amity referred to criminal and deviant acts committed by the Innu.

The under representation of the criminal and deviant acts against the Innu, as well as the persecution, discrimination and defamation of the Innu is of great concern. With the large over representation of criminal and deviant acts by the Innu, it is no surprise that the general public has very stereotypical and biased views of the Innu. There is a serious lack of coverage for the historical, political and social context of the situation that the Innu are in, and have been attempting to recover from, for centuries. 

Claxton-Oldfield, S. & Keefe, S. (1999). Assessing stereotypes about the Innu of Davis Inlet, Labrador. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 31(2), p.86-91.